Range is >10km in double tank drysuit kit for 3500 Euro?? Am I reading this right? This is far superior to the Blacktop Tech. Am I missing something here? Any reason to consider the blacktip tech instead of this unit?
I have to reconsider my plans if this is what I am reading it to be
I would agree that this is superior to the Blacktip Tech. Having spent a lot of hours on a Seacraft Future 1000 my opinion is the engineering is much better. Not to say the Blacktip is a terrible scooter, when it was released there was literally nothing in that price range that compared to it. It is still very valid competitor in this price range and occupies somewhat of a niche market although that gap is closing with recent price increases.
Literally all the specifications (on paper) are better. When I purchased my Blacktips their retail cost was $1500 USD + batteries. They are now $2099 USD + batteries. If you're willing to spend the additional $900-1000 USD then I would get the Seacraft Go! Of course there are shipping costs and taxes but it's still a very competitive price.
The one thing about the Blacktip is you can put an aftermarket larger battery (720 watt-hour) in the scooter and there is an open source DIY firmware for people that like to tweak things. It's too early to see if you could DIY a larger battery for the Seacraft Go but I believe it's size would make this prohibitive but honestly based on the specs, you may not need to.
I suspect the drivetrain / motor is more efficient on the Seacraft Go! but I dont know the engineering enough to speculate. I'm sure someone better versed in this can correct me. I'm basing this off of the published specifications which many companies embellish.
They are claiming 10km (~6.2 miles) with a 582 watt-hours battery with a drysuit diver in doubles (2x12L). The Blacktip tech with the largest offered "stock" battery is 432 watt-hours (2 DeWalt 12Ah) and is rated to 3.5 miles. I believe that is based on Tahoe benchmark which is single tank diver in drysuit. Both of those figures are based on 150fpm (45m).
So with an additional ~150 watt-hours (25% more) of battery, the Seacraft Go! apparently has basically 40% more range. Pretty nice if that is correct but I'd really like to see test that out.
For comparison - I've done 3 miles on a Blacktip in open water with the 12Ah batteries. This was measured by towing a GPS flag and confirmed with marine electronics navigation. My drag was also significantly higher. I was using doubles and a stage. There is really not enough safe battery margin to do these dives so I've upgraded both of my Blacktip techs to 720 watt-hour (36v20ah batteries) for additional range.
seacraft.eu
